Toward A North American UnionBy Patrick Wood Editor, The August Review
The global elite, through the direct operations of President George Bush and his Administration, are creating a North American Union that will combine Canada, Mexico and the U.S. into a superstate called the North American Union (NAU). The NAU is roughly patterned after the European Union (EU). There is no political or economic mandate for creating the NAU, and unofficial polls of a cross-section of Americans indicate that they are overwhelmingly against this end-run around national sovereignty. To answer Lou Dobbs, "No, the political elites have not gone mad," they just want you to think that they have. The reality over appearance is easily cleared up with a proper historical perspective of the last 35 years of political and economic manipulation by the same elite, who now bring us the NAU. This paper will explore this history in order to give the reader a complete picture of the NAU, how it is made possible, who are the instigators of it, and where it is headed. It is important to first understand that the impending birth of the NAU is a gestation of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, not the Congress. This is the topic of the first discussion below. The next topic will examine the global elite's strategy of subverting the power to negotiate trade treaties and international law with foreign countries from the Congress to the President. Without this power, NAFTA and the NAU would never have been possible. After this, we will show that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the immediate genetic and necessary ancestor of the NAU. Lastly, throughout this report, the NAU perpetrators and their tactics will be brought into the limelight so as to affix blame where it properly belongs. The reader will be struck with the fact that the same people are at the center of each of these subjects. The Best Government that Money Can Buy Modern day globalization was launched with the creation of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Its membership consisted of just over 300 powerful elitists from north America, Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Trilateral Commission was to foster a "New International Economic Order" that would supplant the historical economic order. In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Trilateral Commission nonetheless, established a headlock on the Executive Branch of the U.S. government with the election of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a presidential candidate by Brzezinski, Carter was personally tutored in globalist philosophy and foreign policy by Brzezinski himself. Subsequently, when Carter was sworn in as President, he appointed no less than one-third of the U.S. members of the Commission to his Cabinet and other high-level posts in his Administration. Such was the genesis of the Trilateral Commission's domination of the Executive Branch, that continues to the present day. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Trilateral Commission member George H.W. Bush was introduced to the White House as Vice President. Through Bush's influence, Reagan continued to select key appointments from the ranks of the Trilateral Commission. In 1988, George H.W. Bush began his four-year term as President. He was followed by fellow Trilateral Commission member William Jefferson Clinton, who served for 8 years as President and appointed fourteen fellow Trilateral members to his Administration. The election of George W. Bush in 2000 should be no surprise. Although Bush was not a member of the Trilateral Commission, his Vice President Dick Cheney, is. In addition, Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, is also a member of the Commission in her own right. The hegemony of the Trilateral Commission over the Executive Branch of the U.S. government is unmistakable. Critics argue that this scenario is merely circumstantial, that the most qualified political "talent" quite naturally tends to belong to groups like the Trilateral Commission in the first place. Under examination, such explanations are quite hollow. Why would the Trilateral Commission seek to dominate the Executive Branch? Quite simply - Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would have been impossible to accomplish through the only moderately successful lobbying efforts of the past; power to use the government as a bully platform to modify political behavior throughout the world. Of course, the obvious corollary to this hegemony is that the influence and impact of the citizenry is virtually eliminated. Modern Day "World Order" Strategy After its founding in 1973, Trilateral Commission members wasted no time in launching their globalist strategy. But, what was that strategy? Richard Gardner was an original member of the Trilateral Commission, and one of the prominent architects of the New International Economic Order. In 1974, his article "The Hard Road to World Order" appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. With obvious disdain for anyone holding nationalistic political views, Gardner proclaimed,
In Gardner's view, using treaties and trade agreements (such as General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs or GATT) would bind and supercede Constitutional law piece by piece, which is exactly what has happened. In addition, Gardner highly esteemed the role of the United Nations as a third-party legal body that could be used to erode the national sovereignty of individual nations. Gardner concluded that "the case-by-case approach can produce some remarkable concessions of 'sovereignty' that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis" 2 Thus, the end result of such a process is that the U.S. would eventually capitulate its sovereignty to the newly proposed world order. It is not specifically mentioned who would control this new order, but it is quite obvious that the only "players" around are Gardner, and his Trilateral cronies. It should again be noted that the formation of the Trilateral Commission by Rockefeller and Brzezinski was a response to the general frustration that globalism was going nowhere with the status quo prior to 1973. The "frontal assault" had failed, and a new approach was needed. It is a typical mindset of the global elite to view any roadblock as an opportunity to stage an "end-run" to get around it. Gardner confirms this frustration:
The "world's intellectual leadership" apparently refers to academics such as Gardner and Brzezinski. Outside of the Trilateral Commission and the CFR, the vast majority of academic thought at the time was opposed to such notions as mentioned above. Laying the Groundwork: Fast Track Authority In Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, authority is granted to Congress "To regulate commerce with foreign nations." An end-run around this insurmountable obstacle would be to convince Congress to voluntarily turn over this power to the President. With such authority in hand, the President could freely negotiate treaties and other trade agreements with foreign nations, and then simply present them to Congress for a straight up or down vote, with no amendments possible. This again points out elite disdain for a Congress that is elected to be representative "of the people, by the people and for the people." So, the first "Fast Track" legislation was passed by Congress in 1974, just one year after the founding of the Trilateral Commission. It was the same year that Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed as Vice President under President Gerald Ford, neither of whom were elected by the U.S. public. As Vice-President, Rockefeller was seated as the president of the U.S. Senate. According to Public Citizen, the bottom line of Fast Track is that...
When an agreement is about to be given to Congress, high-powered lobbyists and political hammer-heads are called in to manipulate Congressional hold-outs into voting for the legislation. (*See CAFTA Lobbying Efforts) With only 20 hours of debate allowed, there is little opportunity for public involvement. Congress clearly understood the risk of giving up this power to the President, as evidenced by the fact that they put an automatic expiration date on it. Since the expiration of the original Fast Track, there been a very contentious trail of Fast Track renewal efforts. In 1996, President Clinton utterly failed to re-secure Fast Track after a bitter debate in Congress. After another contentious struggle in 2001/2002, President Bush was able to renew Fast Track for himself in the Trade Act of 2002, just in time to negotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and insure its passage in 2005. It is startling to realize that since 1974, Fast Track has not been used in the majority of trade agreements. Under the Clinton presidency, for instance, some 300 separate trade agreements were negotiated and passed normally by Congress, but only two of them were submitted under Fast Track: NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round. In fact, from 1974 to 1992, there were only three instances of Fast Track in action: GATT Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Thus, NAFTA was only the fourth invocation of Fast Track. Why the selectivity? Does it suggest a very narrow agenda? Most certainly. These trade and legal bamboozles didn't stand a ghost of a chance to be passed without it, and the global elite knew it. Fast Track was created as a very specific legislative tool to accomplish a very specific executive task - namely, to "fast track" the creation of the "New International Economic Order" envisioned by the Trilateral Commission in 1973! Article Six of the U.S. Constitution states that "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Because international treaties supercede national law, Fast Track has allowed an enormous restructuring of U.S. law without resorting to a Constitutional convention (Ed. note: Both Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski called for a Constitutional Convention as early as 1972, which could clearly be viewed as a failed "frontal assault"). As a result, national sovereignty of the United States has been severely compromised - even if some Congressmen and Senators are aware of this, the general public is still generally ignorant. North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA was negotiated under the executive leadership of Republican President George H.W. Bush. Carla Hills is widely credited as being the primary architect and negotiator of NAFTA. Both Bush and Hills were members of the Trilateral Commission!
With Bush's first presidential term drawing to a close and Bush desiring political credit for NAFTA, an "initialing" ceremony of NAFTA was staged (so Bush could take credit for NAFTA) in October, 1992. Although very official looking, most Americans did not understand the difference between initialing and signing; at the time, Fast Track was not implemented and Bush did not have the authority to actually sign such a trade agreement. Bush subsequently lost a publicly contentious presidential race to democrat William Jefferson Clinton, but they were hardly polar opposites on the issue of Free Trade and NAFTA. The reason? Clinton was also a seasoned member of the Trilateral Commission. Immediately after inauguration, Clinton became the champion of NAFTA, and orchestrated its passage with a massive Executive Branch effort. Some Unexpected Resistance to NAFTA Prior to the the 1992 election, there was a fly in the elite's ointment - namely, presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, founder and chairman of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Perot was politically independent, vehemently anti-NAFTA, and chose to make it a major campaign issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge sums of money to overcome the negative publicity that Perot gave to NAFTA. At the time, some political analysts believed that Perot, being a billionaire, was somehow put up to this task by the same elitists who were pushing NAFTA. Presumably, it would accumulate all the anti-globalists in one tidy group, thus allowing the elitists to determine who their true enemies really were. It's moot today whether he was sincere or not, but it did have that outcome, and Perot became a lightning rod for the whole issue of free trade. Perot hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nationally televised campaign speeches:
Perot's message struck a nerve with millions of Americans, but it was unfortunately cut short, when he entered into public campaign debates with fellow candidate Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot's lunch, not so much on the issues themselves, but on having superior debating skills. As organized as Perot was, he was no match for a politically and globally seasoned politician like Al Gore. The Spin Machine gears up To counter the public relations damage done by Perot, all the stops were pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite, the President unleashed the biggest and most expensive spin machine the country had ever seen.
Former Chrysler chairman, Lee Iococca, was enlisted for a multi-million dollar nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra, carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better Jobs. Better Wages," all of which have turned out to be empty promises Bill Clinton invited three former Presidents to the White House to stand with him in praise and affirmation of NAFTA. This was the first time in U.S. history that four Presidents had ever appeared together. Of the four, three were members of the Trilateral Commission: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Commissioner, but was nevertheless a confirmed globalist insider. After Ford's accession to the presidency in 1974, he promptly nominated Nelson Rockefeller (David Rockefeller's oldest brother) to fill the Vice Presidency that Ford had just vacated. The academic community was enlisted when, according to Harper's Magazine publisher John MacArthur,
Lastly, prominent Trilateral Commission members themselves took to the press to promote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Commissioners Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated:
Two months later, Kissinger went further,
It is hardly fanciful to think that Kissinger's hype sounds quite similar to the Trilateral Commission's original goal of creating a New International Economic Order.
On January 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track procedures, the house had passed it by 234-200 (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61-38. That Giant Sucking Sound Going South To understand the potential impact of the North American Union, one must understand the impact of NAFTA. NAFTA promised greater exports, better jobs, and better wages. Since 1994, just the opposite has occurred. The U.S. trade deficit soared, and now approaches $1 trillion dollars per year; the U.S. has lost some 1.5 million jobs and real wages in both the U.S. and Mexico have fallen significantly. Patrick Buchanan offered a simple example of NAFTA's deleterious effect on the U.S. economy:
Of course, this only represents the auto industry, but the same effect has been seen in many other industries as well. Buchanan correctly noted that NAFTA was never just a trade deal: Rather, it was an "enabling act - to enable U.S. corporations to dump their American workers and move their factories to Mexico." Indeed, this is the very spirit of all outsourcing of U.S. jobs and manufacturing facilities to overseas locations. Respected economist Alan Tonelson, author of The Race to the Bottom notes the smoke and mirrors that cloud what has really happened with exports:
Tonelson concludes that "the vast majority of American workers has experienced declining living standards, not just a handful of losers." Mexican economist and scholar Miguel Pickard sums up Mexico's supposed benefits from NAFTA:
In short, NAFTA has not been a friend to the citizenry of the United States or Mexico. Still, this is the backdrop against which the North American Union is being acted out. The globalization players and their promises have remained pretty much the same, both just as disingenuous as ever. Prelude to the North American Union Soon after NAFTA was passed in 1994, Dr. Robert A. Pastor began to push for a "deep integration" which NAFTA could not provide by itself. His dream was summed up in his book, Toward a North American Union, published in 2001. Unfortunately for Pastor, the book was released just a few days prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, and thus received little attention from any sector. However, Pastor had the right connections. He was invited to appear before the plenary session (held in Ontario, Canada) of the Trilateral Commission on November 1-2, 2002, to deliver a paper drawing directly on his book. His paper, "A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission," made several recommendations:
Pastor's choice of the words "Modest Proposal" are almost comical considering that he intends to reorganize the entire North American continent. Nevertheless, the Trilateral Commission bought Pastor's proposals hook, line, and sinker. Subsequently, it was Pastor who emerged as the U.S. vice-chairman of the CFR task force that was announced on October 15, 2004:
Independent task force, indeed! A total of twenty-three members were chosen from the three countries. Each country was represented by a member of the Trilateral Commission: Carla A. Hills (U.S.), Luis Robio (Mexico) and Wendy K. Dobson (Canada). Robert Pastor served as the U.S. vice-chairman. This CFR task force was unique in that it focused on economic and political policies for all three countries, not just the U.S. The Task Force stated purpose was to
Richard Haass, chairman of the CFR and long-time member of the Trilateral Commission, pointedly made the link between NAFTA and integration of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.:
Haass' statement "there is precious little thinking available," underscores a repeatedly used elitist technique. That is, first decide what you want to do, and secondly, assign a flock of academics to justify your intended actions. (This is the crux of academic funding by NGO's such as Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.) After the justification process is complete, the same elites that suggested it in the first place allow themselves to be drawn in, as if they had no other logical choice but to play along with the "sound thinking" of the experts. The task force met three times, once in each country. When the process was completed, it issued its results in May, 2005, in a paper titled "Building a North American Community" and subtitled "Report of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America." Even the sub-title suggests that the "future of North America" is a fait accompli decided behind closed doors. Some of the recommendations of the task force are:
Sound familiar? It should: Many of the recommendations are verbatim from Pastor's "modest" presentation to the Trilateral Commission mentioned above, or from his earlier book, Toward a North American Union.
Shortly after the task force report was issued, the heads of all three countries did indeed meet together for a summit in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The specific result of the summit was the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPPNA). The joint press release stated
Once again, we see Pastor's North American Union ideology being continued, but this time as an outcome of a summit meeting of three heads-of-states. The question must be raised, "Who is really in charge of this process?" Indeed, the three premiers returned to their respective countries and started their "working parties" to "consult with stakeholders." In the U.S., the "specific, measurable, and achievable goals" were only seen indirectly by the creation of a government website billed as "Security and Prosperity Partnetship of North America." http://www.spp.gov/ The stakeholders are not mentioned my name, but it is clear that they are not the public of either of the three countries; most likely, they are the corporate interests represented by the members of the Trilateral Commission! The second annual summit meeting took place on March 30-31, 2006, in Cancun, Mexico between Bush, Fox and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. The Security and Prosperity Partnership agenda was summed up in a statement from Mexican president Vicente Fox:
Regulations instead of Treaties It may not have occurred to the reader that the two SPP summits resulted in no signed agreements. This is not accidental nor a failure of the summit process. The so-called "deeper integration" of the three countries is being accomplished through a series of regulations and executive decrees that avoid citizen watchdogs and legislative oversight. 19 In the U.S., the 2005 Cancun summit spawned some 20 different working groups that would deal with issues from immigration, to security, to harmonization of regulations, all under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (www.spp.gov). The SPP in the U.S. is officially placed under the Department of Commerce, headed by Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, but other Executive Branch agencies also have SPP components that report to Commerce. After two years of massive effort, the names of the SPP working group members have not been released. The result of their work have also not been released. There is no Congressional legislation or oversight of the SPP process. The director of SPP, Geri Word, was contacted to ask why a cloud of secrecy is hanging over SPP. According to investigative journalist Jerome Corsi, Word replied
This paternalistic attitude is a typical elitist mentality Their work (whatever they have dreamed up on their own) is too important to be distracted by the likes of pesky citizens or their elected legislators. This elite change of tactics must not be understated: Regulations and Executive Orders have replaced Congressional legislation and public debate. There is no pretense of either. This is another Gardner-style "end-run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece." Apparently, the Trilateral-dominated Bush administration believes that it has accumulated sufficient power to ram the NAU down the throat of the American People, whether they protest or not. Robert A. Pastor: A Trilateral Commission Operative As mentioned earlier, Pastor is hailed as the father of the North American Union, having written more papers about it, delivered more testimonies before Congress, and headed up task forces to study it, than any other single U.S. academic figure. He would seem a tireless architect and advocate of the NAU. Although he might seem to be a fresh, new name to the globalization business, Pastor has a long history with Trilateral Commission members and the global elite. He is the same Robert Pastor who was the executive director of the 1974 CFR task force (funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations) called the Commission on U.S.-Latin American Relations - aka the Linowitz Commission. The Linowitz Commission, chaired by an original Trilateral Commissioner, Sol Linowitz, was singularly credited with the giveaway of the Panama Canal in 1976 under the Carter presidency. ALL of the Linowitz Commission members were members of the Trilateral Commission, save one, Albert Fishlow; other members were W. Michael Blumenthal, Samuel Huntington, Peter G. Peterson, Elliot Richardson and David Rockefeller. One of Carter's first actions as President in 1977 was to appoint Zbigniew Brzezinski to the post of National Security Advisor. In turn, one of Brzezinski's first acts was to appoint his protege, Dr. Robert A. Pastor, as director of the Office of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs. Pastor then became the Trilateral Commission's point-man to lobby for the Canal giveaway. To actually negotiate the Carter-Torrijos Treaty, Carter sent none other than Sol Linowitz to Panama, as temporary ambassador. The 6-month temporary appointment avoided the requirement for Senate confirmation. Thus, the very same people who created the policy became responsible for executing it. The Trilateral Commission's role in the Carter Administration is confirmed by Pastor himself, in his 1992 paper, "The Carter Administration and Latin America: A Test of Principle:"
As to the final Linowitz Commission reports on Latin America, most of which were authored by Pastor himself, he states:
Pastor's deep involvement with Trilateral Commission members and policies is irrefutable, and it continues into the present. In 1996, when Trilateral Commissioner Bill Clinton nominated Pastor as Ambassador to Panama, his confirmation was forcefully knocked down by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), who held a deep grudge against Pastor for his central role in the giveaway of the Panama Canal in 1976. The setback obviously did not phase Pastor in the slightest. Where from here? The stated target for full implementation of the North American Union is 2010.
Don't underestimate the global elite's ability to meet their own deadlines! Conclusion This paper does not pretend to give thorough or even complete coverage to such important and wide-ranging topics as discussed above. We have shown that the restructuring of the United States has been accomplished by a very small group of powerful global elitists as represented by members of the Trilateral Commission. The Trilateral Commission plainly stated that it intended to create a New International Economic Order. We have followed their members from 1973 to the present, only to find that they are at the dead center of every critical policy and action that seeks to restructure the U.S. Some critics will undoubedly argue that involvement by members of the Trilateral Commission is merely incidental. However, the odds for their involvement at random is too large to be even remotely understandable; it would be like winning the lottery jackpot five times in a row, with the same numbers! The credo of The August Review is "Follow the money, follow the power." In this view, the United States has literally been hijacked by less than 300 greedy and self-serving global elitists who have little more than contempt for the citizens of the countries they would seek to dominate. According to Trilateralist Richard Gardner's viewpoint, this incremental takeover (rather than a frontal approach) has been wildly successful. To again answer Lou Dobbs question, "Have our political elites gone mad?" - No Lou, they are not "mad", nor are they ignorant. To look into the face of these global elites is to look into the face of unmitigated greed, avarice and treachery. Footnotes: 1 Gardner, Richard, "The Hard Road to World Order,"
(Foreign Affairs, 1974) p. 558
Original article: eco.freedom.org  BACK
|
